I'm very sorry.
I’ll try to describe my experiences with those people for you.
The first was back in secondary school, nearly 10 years ago. A guy I 'befriended' (I never made especially close friends until sometime in the last few years, though I’m not terribly sure they’re everything the brochure made them out to be
) who also irritated me a great deal. I think a lot of the reasons he irritated me was that I could see a lot of myself in the way he acted (though it was usually the way I tried hard not to act; which is difficult because you’re only acting as your nature dictates), and so I hated myself for getting irritated with him.
(I realised that I was different from everybody at about the age of 8 and tried to start observing my own behaviour, to learn from it, though I didn't have any basis of comparison to see how well I managed this).
The guys I knew in church were a boy and his step father, though that 'boy' must be around 20 by now (I think he was about 5 years younger than me). The step father had his family join the church but was, for some reason, rebellious against its principles (why join if you don't agree with it?) and the family would generally agree with him or go along with what he said in order to please him.
He was particularly impatient with his Step son, whose behaviours was no worse than my own.
I remember after church on one Sunday, as people started up from their seats and gravitated towards oneanother, to mingle he kicked the boy in the arse, apparently at random and chastised him for his behaviour. The boy's older brother took great pleasure in this and imitated this behaviour shortly after.
They had a lot of trouble getting him officially diagnosed and statemented as Aspergic (I don't like the word 'aspie', or however it’s spelled) because local health authorities don't like to spend money on support for various services (educational and other things). I had the same problem myself and wasn't much older than him when I was finally diagnosed. (One doctor diagnosed me at a very early age but her opinion was dismissed. I don't remember her name but she later turned out to be a leading authority on Autism).
Shortly after this boy received his diagnosis his step father was diagnosed with it, too. He became much less irritable around his step son, not shouting at him as much or showing signs of that he might be violent when other people weren’t around. I don't think their relationship exactly 'blossomed' into some relationship you might see on some United State'ian family show, the boy was much calmer from then on (he'd previously seemed to be on the edge of a nervous breakdown - for several years).
Looking back I think I should have alerted the social services about their situation. For years the poor little guy desperately sought the old man's approval and received nothing but his scorn and it was taking its toll on him mentally. Things mightn't have worked out as well as they did (eventually).
Does that help? There are one or 2 other little titbits which I gleaned from them, when comparing their lives to mind which I'd rather not share on an open forum (nothing morally dubious, though
) which I'll be happy to share through PMs if you wish
